“Quick.  Quick.  We’ll be late” Laura cried breathlessly as she tried to hold on to her hat as she and Jeanie, her best friend, ran across London Bridge to catch the omnibus from the north side stop, to travel west along Cheapside to the Bailey.  They didn’t want to be late for the first day of the trial of their friend and colleague, Katy McNiel.

It was a fine summer’s day in the late 1800s and Katy was to be tried for the manslaughter of one of her patients at London’s famous Queen’s Hospital.

Cheapside was one of the main west-east roads across the north bank of the Thames in London.  The road was a crush everywhere with horse drawn taxis, private carriages and omnibuses jostling for space on the all too inadequate road. 

Pedestrians were often pushed to the sides of the filthy streets by the traffic where they tried to avoid the ubiquitous horse dung that was left from the moment it had dropped on the road until it was collected by the night sweepers. In the heat of the day, the stench was overpowering in this part of east London. 

And the dust and filth, and the over crowding – life in the city was all very unpleasant.

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